New Delhi, Dec 28: The year 2013 saw the rise of Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi at the national level with him becoming BJP’s Prime Ministerial candidate for the 2014 general elections as the party is hoping to encash his growing popularity in the next Lok Sabha polls to return to power at the Centre after ten long years.
The BJP is hoping a come back at the Centre as the Congress regime has been marred by corruption charges and other domestic and international issues.
In what could be seen as major relief for Mr Modi, a local court in Ahmedabad on Thursday rejected slain Congress MP Ehsan Jafri’s widow Zakia’s plea protesting closure report of Supreme Court-appointed SIT, which gave a clean chit to the Chief Minister and others with regard to alleged conspiracy behind the 2002 riots.
A day after the court’s verdict, Mr Modi for the first time since the 2002 riots, shared the “harrowing ordeal” he had gone through during the last 12 years at a personal level saying that he was “shaken to the core” due to the riots which claimed more than 1000 lives.
“I was shaken to the core. ‘Grief’, ‘sadness’, ‘misery’, ‘pain’, ‘anguish’, ‘agony’ – mere words could not capture the absolute emptiness one felt on witnessing such inhumanity,” Mr Modi said in a blog.
“The law of nature is that truth alone triumphs – Satyameva Jayate,” Mr Modi said reacting to the court verdict.
Mr Modi also alleged that he was attacked and blamed in relation with the riots only for “narrow personal and political ends”.
Mr Modi also came under attack from the Congress and other political parties after becoming BJP’s PM candidate.
The Gujarat CM’s attempts to defend himself against allegations of inaction during the 2002 riots in the state sparked off a political storm when he used a puppy analogy to explain his position.
His close aide Amit Shah also came under investigations by the CBI for his alleged role in the Ishrat Jahan killing and other cases.
The BJP has been alleging that the Congress after failing to fight him politically was misusing the CBI and other probe agencies to implicate Mr Modi.
Mr Modi also faced attacks from the Congress and other political parties after two investigative portals, Cobrapost and Gulail, had claimed on November 15 that Mr Shah, the former Home Minister of Gujarat, had ordered illegal surveillance of a woman at the behest of one ‘saheb’ and they had released taped conversation between Mr Shah and an IPS officer to back up their claim.
The Union Cabinet on December 26 approved setting up of an inquiry commission to probe the alleged snooping case.
The Centre’s move was described by the BJP as an ‘assault’ on federal structure of the country and political ‘witch-hunt’ against Mr Modi.
The year 2013 also saw an end to boycott of Mr Modi by countries like the UK and Australia.
Although many western nations including Britain and the US had distanced themselves from Mr Modi in the immediate aftermath of the 2002 riots, there has been a shift in their position.
In March this year, Britain’s foreign office minister Hugo Swire met Mr Modi in Gujarat.
Barry Gardiner, chair of the Labour Friends of India, had invited Mr Modi to the UK.
There was also a controversy over Indian MPs’ letters to US President Barack Obama for denying visa to Mr Modi.
However, a number of MPs denied signing any such letter.
In June, the BJP had faced a major rift when Mr Advani, on June 10, quit from all the party posts opposing the elevation of Mr Modi as election campaign committee chief. Eighty-five year-old Advani, who is a founder member of the BJP, had resigned from the party’s parliamentary board, national executive and election committee saying he has been finding it difficult to reconcile with the current functioning of the party and the direction in which it was going.
However, the crisis came to an end on the next day itself when Mr Advani, after inrtervention of RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat and request from almost all the senior party leaders, took back his resignation.
Mr Advani had also skipped the party’s national executive meeting in Goa where Mr Modi’s elevation was announced by party chief Rajnath Singh.
Aiming to encash on Mr Modi’s grass-root popularity, the BJP formally anointed him as the BJP’s PM candidate on September 14 keeping aside Mr Advani’s opposition.
The announcement marked a significant power shift in the BJP. The decision to project Mr Modi as PM candidate was taken at a meeting of the party’s Parliamentary Board which Mr Advani skipped as a mark of protest.
However, subsequently relations between Mr Advani and Mr Modi normalised when both the leaders were seen sharing the dias at rallies and other occasions.
Mr Advani and Mr Modi shared stage at the party’s mega rally in Bhopal.
The BJP’s PM candidate’s rallies have been receiving overwhelming response across the country.
His rallies in Mumbai, Varanasi, Delhi, Patna and other places were a hit. His Patna rally witnessed serial bomb blasts which claimed five lives.
The year also saw change of guard in the BJP with Rajnath Singh becoming party chief in beginning of the year after Nitin Gadkari resigned in a dramatic situation after facing allegations of financial irregularities in his Purti Group. It was the RSS that handpicked Mr Gadkari for the post of the party chief in 2009.
The outgoing year, in which the party performed well in the Assembly polls held during 2013-end, also witnessed a rift within the BJP with party patriarch L K Advani expressing his reservation against the elevation of Mr Modi, his one-time protege, first as election campaign committee chief and then as the party’s PM candidate.
The BJP returned to power in Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh; uprooted the Congress in Rajasthan and emerged as the single largest party in Delhi in the December 4 Assembly results declared on December 8.
While the saffron party lost its maiden Government in south India in May, it failed to return to power in Delhi after 15 long years as the newly-formed Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) got 28 seats in the 70-member House.
The BJP, which got 32 seats, including one of its ally SAD, declined to form the Government as it failed to get the magic figure of 36 required to form Government in the national capital.
Shivraj Singh Chouhan and Raman Singh led their party in romping back to power in Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh respectively riding on works done for the common man in their states.
In Rajasthan, the Congress suffered an unprecedented defeat against the BJP, which stormed back to power with a three-fourths majority. The BJP won 162 of the 199 seats where elections were held, 84 seats more than its strength in the last Assembly. (UNI)
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